| Pages in topic: [1 2] > | New York Times compares machine translations from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft with that of humans
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I guess Google wins out on the St Exupery text because it accesses existing human translations. Good for Google!
| | | | Tatjana Dujmic 
Germany
Local time: 21:45
Member (2006)
English to German
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At least the New York Times is of the opinion that human translators won't be out of work too soon. So there is hope!
| | | | Susan Welsh
United States
Local time: 15:45
Russian to English
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For further comparison, I ran the same texts through my trial copy of Promt (rules-based MT), for the languages I know, and here are the results:
Le Petit Prince:
First evening I therefore fell asleep on the sand in thousand thousand of any lived earth. I was more isolated than a survivor on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Then you imagine my surprise, in the rising of day, when an odd little voice awakened me. She said: please draw in me a sheep!
From Gorbache... See more For further comparison, I ran the same texts through my trial copy of Promt (rules-based MT), for the languages I know, and here are the results:
Le Petit Prince:
First evening I therefore fell asleep on the sand in thousand thousand of any lived earth. I was more isolated than a survivor on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Then you imagine my surprise, in the rising of day, when an odd little voice awakened me. She said: please draw in me a sheep!
From Gorbachev:
We live in the new world: - It is finished «cold war», race of arms and the mad militarization of the country which have spoilt our economy, public consciousness and morals is stopped. Threat world soldiers is removed.
[note: I deleted the hyphenation that for some stupid reason is in the Russian text in the NYT article, thereby giving a better result.]
Kafka:
When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from worried dreams, he was found in his bed to an immense vermin transformed. ▲ Collapse
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The use of well-known texts in NYT's test makes Google look much better than it really is. Another problem with Google is that its blunders are sometimes very "human" and can slip unnoticed by casual readers.
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pikachupichu
Japan
Local time: 04:45
English to Japanese
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I am too frustrated with all search engines, Google, Yahoo, MS. All make grammatical errors, and cannot use as translation tools. It may be OK for you to save your time and you may proofread afterward for Eng to Fra/Ger/Ita/Esp. However, Japanese/Korean/Mongolian/Chinese translations shall not accept machine translations.
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Personally I find the challenge of Machine Translation really interesting and don't feel personally threatened in any way by technology. There will always be something else to do. Google does seem to win hands down with its statistical approach, but then apparently synapses in the infant brain seem to form "statistically" according to the frequency of the sounds they hear and other stimuli, so perhaps this isn't surprising. Odd the translation for "s'il vous plaît" though. Why didn't Google fi... See more Personally I find the challenge of Machine Translation really interesting and don't feel personally threatened in any way by technology. There will always be something else to do. Google does seem to win hands down with its statistical approach, but then apparently synapses in the infant brain seem to form "statistically" according to the frequency of the sounds they hear and other stimuli, so perhaps this isn't surprising. Odd the translation for "s'il vous plaît" though. Why didn't Google find the human translation "please" (its one mistake in the translation) ▲ Collapse
| | | | Murat Uzum
Türkiye
Local time: 22:45
English to Turkish
We are all John Connor, machines won't succeed!
| | | | Anton Mukhin
Russian Federation
Local time: 22:45
English to Russian
Russian translation was not so bad by Yahoo!
You should see how poorely Google does when translation from English into Russian - it's a total shame )
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Anton Mukhin
Russian Federation
Local time: 22:45
English to Russian
Oops... "when translating", of course )
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If you ever want to get a good laugh, just put a somewhat complex text into any of these translators and enjoy the result. Incredibly enough, the most advanced technology cannot translate human writing. There are too many variables at work. Maybe someday. But translators are safe for now. JRP
| | | | Laurent KRAULAND (X)
France
Local time: 21:45
French to German
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Some good MT results (and these of G. in particular) are the result of worldwide data harvesting and alignment.
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I guess we cannot really predict what is going to happend with the "performance" of machines translations such as the ones Google or Yahoo! provide. From these translations, we get the impression Google looks quite acceptable, but we cannot ignore the fact of the human factor in anything written. As Justin said, there are too many variables at work and certainly, human writing tends to be imperfect so this "imperfection" needs to be handeled with a "imperfection" too. A complex text may be an ex... See more I guess we cannot really predict what is going to happend with the "performance" of machines translations such as the ones Google or Yahoo! provide. From these translations, we get the impression Google looks quite acceptable, but we cannot ignore the fact of the human factor in anything written. As Justin said, there are too many variables at work and certainly, human writing tends to be imperfect so this "imperfection" needs to be handeled with a "imperfection" too. A complex text may be an example of this and at that point, I think machines still have a long way to go. ▲ Collapse
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Pernille Chapman
United Kingdom
Local time: 20:45
Member (2004)
English to Danish
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Surely there's one more mistake in the Google version of The Little Prince? 'She' doesn't refer back to the person speaking (being a prince, we must assume he is male!) but to the 'odd little voice'.
Agree with the points made about the choice of source texts; no doubt Google would do a lot worse on technical or indeed marketing texts. Check out a few product-promoting websites with 'Choose a language' options if you need further proof...
| | | | telefpro
Local time: 01:15
Portuguese to English
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Sometimes Google translates like the cat ate the elephant, and we need human translation to save the elephant
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Google 'vocabulary' data bases are rich when 'translating' from or into English. The results for non English translations are so funny and meaningless. Languages are too complex to be 'understood' entirely by machines. Just try google translate for idioms or jargons! Free comedy 24/24!
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